Friday, April 01, 2016

A few years ago, I lost some online "friends" because they didn't care what I had to say about women and pay. Why? Well here's how it went...

"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
-George Orwell

Recently on Facebook I found myself being hated by several women who previously were at least friendly online. They are wives and gamers who I knew online and we got along well. I try to always treat women with respect, especially online where they tend to be treated as at best second class players or meat to be devoured by horny gamer boys.

However, when the topic of unequal pay came up, I made the mistake of pointing out to two pregnant women that because women can get pregnant they are less valuable to an employer than men who cannot. I'm sure a combination of hormones, frustration, stress, and general vulnerability played into their response but now they hate me.

To me the statement I made is non controversial, it is quite straight forward and if unfair or at least frustrating, not unreasonable. The problem is that people don't quite seem to realize what businesses exist for. They are not there to make you feel good, be fair to you, or be nice. They are in existence to make money. A business is how the business owner makes his living, just like your job. You don't go to work to be fair to your boss and be nice to the company, you go there to get paid. You can be nice and fair in the process, but that's not the purpose or the goal.

Think about this objectively and it will make sense to you. Say you have a company, and you have two prospective workers.

Worker A might, and is likely to, take on a condition wherein they will miss 6-12 months of work or more, and by law the employer must not only retain them as an employee, but pay them for the time they are gone (in many states).

Worker B cannot suffer from this condition.

Now, assuming you are prohibited by law from simply never hiring Worker A, what will your response be? Worker A is not only going to represent a reduction in productivity, but probably will require you to hire a replacement while they're gone dealing with this condition.

Bottom line: Worker A is going to miss a bunch of work, and thus have less experience and seniority than Worker B. And, in fact, it is absolute fact that working mothers tend to miss a lot of work even when they come back rushing to deal with emergencies and events involving their child. Working fathers do sometimes too, now, which leads employers to tend to avoid hiring people with young kids for certain jobs.

That means for the business, you're worth less pay than someone not in that position. You're giving the company less, costing them more, and hence are worth less in terms of pay.

From a business' perspective, the conclusion is quite obvious. But women seem to have a problem with the deal because it is tilted against them. All of us want things going our way and are frustrated and unhappy when things go against us, that's just normal for humans on this earth. So I do sympathize with women being less than pleased with the reality.

Yet there seems to be another layer lately, one that has been tacked on by feminism which argues that women should have the upper hand and best deal in everything, and in the name of equality get the good parts of all things and none of the bad. For example, women don't want to be equal to men in lifespan or likelihood of heart disease.

So when I brought this up, the embittered women declared that I thought women as a gender were "worth less as human beings" because of their body parts. This would come as a shock to the women in my family, not to mention the many I've dealt with and known in my life.

Yet the entire concept that less pay means less overall worth as a human is just ridiculous and even idiotic. Is a teacher worth less as a human being than a celebrity because they get paid less? Is a starting worker at a business worth less as a human being than a 10 year vet at the job? Is a rookie baseball player getting minimum salary worth less than a superstar with a 5 year multi-million dollar contract?

Obviously pay has absolutely nothing to do with value as a human it simply reflects the economic value to a business that the worker represents. That girl working the fry machine at McDonald's is not as valuable to the business as the manager, she gets paid less. The pay also represents the business' perspective on that worker's commitment to the job. Fry girl is likely to just not show up one day because she got sick of working there. The manager will give 2 weeks notice.

What's amazing to me is that anyone, anywhere, would be so shocked and outraged with such an obvious business principle that they would not simply disagree or debate this topic, but would instantly and totally reverse their perspective on me and go from amiable esteem to contemptuous hatred.

It just is shocking to me that someone's worldview could be so totally damaged and their comprehension of economics and business so twisted by a leftist concept of life that they would react so violently and irrationally to such a plain fact of life.

But, I suppose, I shouldn't really be surprised. I guess in the modern world I should be amazed it doesn't happen more often. Because for being so progressive and modern, leftists are some of the most bitter, frustrated, angry, and unhappy folks on the planet. And they seem to want to share it with everyone.
*UPDATE also see my piece on compensation, inspired by a comment below.